


Manual Override

by the_ragnarok



Series: Proxy [1]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Consent Issues, D/s, Dubious Consent, M/M, Ownership, sex without desire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 16:05:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6290956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ragnarok/pseuds/the_ragnarok
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is straight. It's just that belonging to Harold takes precedence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Manual Override

Harold never asks.

John offers frequently. Much more often than he'd actually be comfortable letting Harold fuck him, if he's honest. He'd still lay back and spread for Harold if he took John up on his offer: that goes without saying. 

But the fact that Harold only accepts very rarely is part of the reason John offers so frequently. And while he's being honest, yeah, he gets a little vain thrill from the way Harold's eyes linger on him before the usual quick dismissal. 

Tonight, though, John's, "Anything else I can do for you?" is answered with a thoughtful nod and a "Strip, please." 

In one way, he isn't into Harold at all. Harold's a guy, and not the first John has let fuck him, but John never got hard looking at guys, never jacked off thinking about them. Harold's body is a fact to him: he knows the weight of it, the shape, the smell, knows how much effort it takes to carry Harold's unconscious body to safety and where to press when his injuries act up.

In the same way, John knows what it feels like to let his body open to accept Harold's cock.

It doesn't hurt. Harold wouldn't hurt him (which is another part of why John offers). Harold is slow, and careful, much more so than any other guy who's ever done this to John. It feels good, in a dull, mechanical way: Harold knows where John's prostate is and how to hit it, exactly how John likes to have his dick stroked. He knows this because John told him, showed him.

John showed Harold because he asked.

Harold's eyes are avid on his face, the tips of his fingers gentle on John's jaw. "Do you know why I'm doing this?"

John does. He says, "Why?" anyway. That's part of the point, for both of them, having Harold say it.

"Because I can," Harold says. "Because you're mine, and you'll let me do anything to you."

Even after hearing them time and again, the words make something in John's chest clench and flutter. They're absolutely true, of course. That's what makes them powerful.

"And because I enjoy it," Harold says, voice gone low, intimate. "You're very hot inside, and tight; you're very beautiful, and I enjoy fucking you very much, John." The obscenity drops from his lips with pin-point precision. John shudders under him.

"I will come inside you," Harold says, "and it will stay inside you, because you're mine, and I can mark you however I want." He punctuates this with a sucking bite to John's neck.

Without his volition, John's hand rises to the back of Harold's neck, keeping him in place, arching into the bite. It will leave a bruise, the only kind of bruise Harold will leave on him. On the outside, anyway. 

Then Harold's hand wraps warm and tight and firm around John's dick. "And I can make you come," Harold murmurs, "even if you aren't the least bit inclined to like what I'm doing to you, because you're mine," he punctuates the word with a squeeze and a stroke, "and I can," again, "because you'll let me, won't you?" 

John nods, desperately. 

Harold smiles. "Say it."

"Yes," John says, all the other words catching thick at his throat.

Harold's smile softens and warms. "John. Come for me, please," and John does, gushing up into Harold's hand, tightening around the cock inside him. "Good," Harold tells him, and John feels it down to his bones: he's being _good_ for Harold. The impact of the words makes his insides clench, his heart beating erratically.

In another moment, Harold comes, too. He pulls out almost immediately, then lays beside John and wraps his arms around him. 

Harold won't thank him. He's done it, the first couple of times, until he realized that thanking John ruined this. It works because this is something that belongs to Harold, _John_ belongs to Harold, and so it's not a question of whether John gives. Only whether Harold takes. 

Instead, Harold strokes his back, and calls him his dearest, and kisses John's forehead right along the hairline, where it makes John shiver in a way that has nothing at all to do with sex.

In that way, saying he's into Harold is like saying that the Machine is a complicated piece of software: reducing an entity which practically has a life of its own into component parts.

"Some days, I wonder whether the same effect wouldn't be achieved if I carved you up with a knife," Harold says. He's got a rueful expression, teetering on the cusp of self-recrimination but not quite falling in.

"You wouldn't enjoy doing that," John points out. 

But Harold would do it, if it were necessary for some reason. On his more fucked-up days, John comes up with scenarios where it _is_ necessary, just to make his heart flutter and leap at the thought of how steady Harold's hands would be even if his eyes were wide with horror; how he wouldn't flinch, how he'd do whatever was necessary, because John is _his_. 

"I don't need to do violence to you to prove you're mine," Harold says softly. "And I needn't fuck you, either." He uses words so precisely: he won't call what they do _have sex_ , because that implies reciprocity.

John shrugs. "I offered. If you want me not to do that, I can stop."

Harold kisses his face again, his cheek and his chin and the corner of his eyebrow. His fingers dig into John's back muscles, making him groan. "I wish you'd let me do this under other circumstances." 

He's talking about this casual affection, concentrated sweetness that John finds cloying when Harold hadn't just demonstrated his ownership of him. "You could. You can do anything you want."

Harold nips his earlobe, and John lets himself giggle, giddy with belonging. "I wish you'd let yourself do this more often," John finds himself telling him, meaning the sex. "It's not good for you to deprive yourself."

"I'll bear that in mind." His voice is desert-dry, and John knows Harold is just managing to rein himself back from calling John a giant hypocrite.

John is, and he isn't. He'll probably never fuck a woman again. He won't fuck anyone without Harold's say-so, and Harold isn't the type to share his toys. Harold doesn't choose his toys lightly, either. He has very few things he genuinely cares about, ones he won't abandon in a heartbeat. 

That's another reason John offers his body so frequently. Harold deserves to have nice things.

And yet another is that: John will probably never fuck anyone else ever again, because he's Harold's now, until the day he dies. And that knowledge makes his heart pound in a way desire never did, makes him want to open himself up and offer everything he has just to feel more of it.

When he does, Harold takes him up on it. Not often, not a lot at a time, but slowly and inexorably, everything John is and has is examined, weighted, and accepted: and that's why John offers.


End file.
